A Godess, a car and a few stops down memory lane.

So finally I'm back home. Left home early in the morning of the 8th, and promptly banged into a minibus on a crazy one lane street in the city. Six days and over 600 Kms later I had to go give the car in for repairs and I must say other than that one glitch the trip went like a dream. I was with my family during the Puja after a gap of four years and it felt good to be back!

Parents, grandparents, uncle and aunt!

For the most part the roads have improved a great deal, the 4 lane NH 2 lets you cruise at 120 Kmph and still feel short of a gear! Of course the highway and long flat roads aren't a place for the diminutive Alto, but in the narrow dusty tracks which we took to find old zamindaar families around Shantiniketan who still keep to their family Durga Pujas, it was perfectly at home!

Several villages and family 'mandap's later we decided it was time for some city flavour and took a trip to the city of Durgapur 50 Kms away. As the sun set, the lights of the huge, glamorous community Puja's strove to keep the gathering darkness at bay!

Eventually I headed off to Asansol to be a part of the final idol immersion festivities in my old neighbourhood. I was really saddened to notice that the huge seesam tree that used to stand smack in the middle of the pandal had died some years back and had left the place looking too clean. And empty.

The same pandal, the same idol, but no same old tree.

Everyone I met seemed to expect a 16 year old in my place. And some of the other 16-year-olds I seemed to remember had somehow morphed into serious 22-year-olds who I could hardly recognise. Well, most of them had simply disappeared. It was eventually up to the evening's traditional display of fireworks to cheer me up. Which it did, considerably :).

As promised, I've put up some pictures of the Godess, the pandals and the trip on my photoblog.